No point in beating about the bush. “Were you really a beauty queen?” I ask Angel Blue. Tall, perfectly sculpted and with a smile that could sell toothpaste, she certainly looks the part. Yet the catwalk-to-coloratura progress of a beauty queen who turns into an opera singer and goes on to play Lulu, the most enigmatic seductress in lyric theatre, seems too good to be true. Just like the very name Angel Blue.

I am rebuked on both counts. She was indeed born Angel Joy Blue, 29 years ago in California. “And yes, I was a beauty queen,” she purrs.